For almost 100 years, Rhode Islanders have had the chance to see a movie or a show at the Historic Park Theatre on Park Avenue. This fall, Spectacle Live will keep the tradition going.

The Massachusetts-based management company held an open house Saturday afternoon in advance of the Park’s first performance of the season on Oct. 4. The Park’s opening performance under this new management is set to feature Jim Henson’s “Labyrinth” in concert. Tickets range in price from $39 to $79. 

This year’s re-opening of the Park is the most recent in a series of openings and closings in the venue’s history. Business began in 1924, when Peter Nelson opened the cinema for the first time as the New Park Theatre. For its first 40 years in business, the auditorium offered a single screen. The first movie that the Park showed was “Secrets,” a silent film starring Norma Talmadge.

Peter Nelson’s grandson, Charlie Nelson, began working at the theater as a child and still lives in Cranston with his wife today. He showed up for the open house.

The first movie he remembered watching at the Park was “Operation Pacific” starring John Wayne in 1951. Nelson recalled cleaning popcorn and candy from the ground after weekend showings; he was also responsible for arranging the lights in the marquee each Tuesday and Saturday evening to spell out the featured titles. One winter night in the 1950s when Nelson was working, about a dozen moviegoers were in the cinema when a major snowstorm hit. Nelson, his father, and the patrons who lived too far away to walk home decided to get comfortable inside the cinema and spend the night there.

“I knew so much about the theater business because I had lived in it, so I could do it,” Nelson said. “It was really in our blood in the family.”

Nelson graduated from URI and managed Park for a few years after his graduation before eventually leaving the business to join the military in the early 1960s.

The cinema closed in 1964 and re-opened in 1966 as the Park Cinema, having added two more screens. The triplex operated for 35 years before closing in 2001 and did not reopen until 2009, this time as a live performance venue. The Park closed once again in the summer of 2023. Since last summer, the Park has been added to Spectacle Live’s list of venues around New England that it manages.

In the time between the theater’s recent closing and its re-opening, the Park underwent several hundred thousand dollars in renovations. Many of these renovations, Spectacle Live CEO Pete Lally said, are invisible to the audience but enhance the quality of the onstage performances. 

“A lot of the upgrades right now are black boxes on stage,” Lally said. These “black boxes” include new sound and lighting systems that are suited to a range of live performances. Lally explained that Spectacle Live operates by bringing live performers to 11 theaters around New England.

“Our main focus is live events, whether it be bringing in concerts or comedy or theater,” Lally said. The backstage renovations reflect this focus on live performance and continue the Park’s mission since 2009 to showcase live acts to its audience. Spectacle Live aimed to create an enjoyable backstage experience for the artists who perform at the Park. Lally hopes that this will draw even more performers to the venue in the future.

The Park’s programming for this season extends through April, with performances ranging from Dionne Warwick in concert to Chazz Palminteri’s “A Bronx Tale Live.” Ticket prices vary depending on the performance. 

The Historic Park Theatre is not the first historic venue that Spectacle Live has worked with. Spectacle Live is also involved with the Lowell Memorial Auditorium in Massachusetts and the Colonial Theatre in New Hampshire, both of which are over 100 years old and owned by their respective cities. Lally described efforts to research the architectural features of these buildings over the years; during a restoration project, one theater in Vermont managed to replace a cracked slab of granite using stone from the same quarry used in the historic theater’s original design. 

“Every opening is a little bit different, every process is different,” Lally said. “It’s one visit, one conversation. One thing at a time gets rolling, and before you know it, you get the altitude you need to get moving.”